I was really thinking of grabbing the UD-H01 from Richer sounds (£150/$250) but after reading the thread I'm a little reluctant, my original choice was the Objective2 + ODAC, I plan to get an O2 for the amp side of things shortly, and would have it paired with the UD-H01, using Grado PS500s.

Little worried though, I have time to sit on it but the driver issues with Foobar (my main computer source) might just turn me away, along with those saying the mids lack.

don´t judge this DAC too hard. for the price you pay you get a lot. i use it with the xlr outputs and active monitors, and there are no mids lacking. by the way, this device is no dedicated headphone amplifier, it is a dac with an additional headphone amp. no more, no less ...

Little worried though, I have time to sit on it but the driver issues with Foobar (my main computer source) might just turn me away, along with those saying the mids lack.

Red herrings statement I would say. Driver issues with Foobar has nothing to do with the digital to analog decoding that is performed by the Teac. The driver issues are at the PC end, not the DAC end.

As for lacking mids: that is purely down to presentation and 3D perception. It's like listening to a band singing live without mics, or the same band singing live with mics and amplifiers beaming the music at your ears. On top of that, how much midrange do you need before you realize the treble and bass is weak against the excess in midrange?

The drivers are provided by TEAC and are *required* to use the UD-H01 with a PC. If you plug the device in without installing the drivers first it can slow your PC to a crawl (as I discovered on my spare laptop). A lot of other dacs work just fine at up to 24/96 without any drivers.

Sonically I'm testing the UD-H01 with £1000 headphones and power and interconnect cables that cost more than it does, and the headphones in particular are extremely picky, so with something other than HD800s YMMV (edited as its their fussiness that matters, rather than their cost). I'm also hoping it opens up with another 200 hours of use, although that's mostly wishful thinking (TEAC have a high-end division, I'm not sure exactly what the relationship is, and one reviewer found that one of their dacs improved further with extended run-in times, so I figured I'd give it a go).

Edit: I've put it back in my main system to warm up as it's at 480 hours or thereabouts. I don't know if pinched is the right word now, but it doesn't breathe, it's not an open window, there are no inky black silences between the instruments, it feels constrained, pick your phrase... It is fast and exciting with good bass punch though, so a frustrating mix. I'm using it single ended in case it matters.

I'm still persevering. I've discovered that using a wadia ipod dock, which mutes briefly between songs, causes the TEAC's relays to click between every song - very annoying. I also hooked a Hiface EVO up between the PC and the TEAC and ran it with the coax that way too. Whilst it allows me to use Wasapi again and doesn't force the relay to change with every song, it sometimes changes one way and then forgets to change back again. So it might go from 44 to 48khz for one song automatically, but then doesn't go back to 44 for the next song. Restarting Foobar doesn't help, I have to cycle through the inputs on the TEAC to get it to pick up the sample rate correctly. It truly sucks in that regard.

I'm now running it through my speaker amps into headphones so I can use it balanced and it's showing real finesse and expression in voices. All the little details are starting to come through and it's holding up well sonically. I'm burning in some new cables at the moment so I can't comment on whether it still sounds constrained or not, but I'm not noticing it as much. That may just be because I'm getting used to it though.

I'm really interested in buying this DAC, but the driver issues are putting me off completely.

I'm not an audiophile by any stretch, but I want to upgrade my computer speakers to a decent pair of monitors, and I also own a pair of ATH-ESW10Jpn and I'm very curious how they would sound with a headphone amp.

I just want the upgrade to be hassle free. I want to plug in the dac (via spdif), speakers, and headphones and I want it to just _work_. If the drivers for UD-H01 can't do this, I'm not interested.

Am I right in that I would have hassle in getting them to work through spdif on a Windows 8 machine?

Thanks!

Edit,
I've also emailed TEAC asking them if there's any chance we'll see updated drivers for the unit, and referred them to the discussion in this tread. Here's to hoping Edited by mstark - 11/16/12 at 3:50pm

I can't comment on Windows 8 as I've never used it, but if you're happy using the default sound device for everything (set in Windows) and all your music is at the same sample rate then the device drivers won't matter much once you install them. The problems come when trying to use Wasapi in Foobar and with track lists of varying sample rates.

The TEAC doesn't have a speaker amplifier in it, it's just a preamp, so unless your monitors are active speakers you'll need this units bigger brother which has an amp included I believe. That uses a different DAC chip though iirc, so nothing we've said here may be relevant.

First post here!bought this Dac about a week ago,and for the first few days had lots of problems with distortion,and drivers dropping out,it was terrible on things like you tube and would disconnect from the driver every few songs,thought it was a faulty unit,but the replacement did the same,thankfully i persevered,i was running vista with bloated memory,so i wiped it and downloaded windows 7,no problems at all and the unit is starting to sing!

I am having a nightmare with this thing! Running on Windows 7 Home Premium x64, the drivers are so poor it's practically broken for me...

I've tried outputting with foobar, MP-HC and VLC player and no matter what I do the DAC "disappears" from the O/S and device manager at random (sometimes after just a few seconds). This causes the players to output unknown errors and crash randomly, making music enjoyment impossible. I have to power cycle the unit to get it recognised again.... This happens with WASAPI and simple direct show output... Furthermore, in the brief time it plays if I seek through a track the sound distorts heavily too.

Tried various USB ports, no change... Truly awful start, I was prepared to face some issues since I read this thread beforehand, but this is ridiculous. I'm considering sticking to my Xonar STX and returning it.

If anyone has experienced similar issues and has found a fix, please let me know!

I am having a nightmare with this thing! Running on Windows 7 Home Premium x64, the drivers are so poor it's practically broken for me...

I've tried outputting with foobar, MP-HC and VLC player and no matter what I do the DAC "disappears" from the O/S and device manager at random (sometimes after just a few seconds). This causes the players to output unknown errors and crash randomly, making music enjoyment impossible. I have to power cycle the unit to get it recognised again.... This happens with WASAPI and simple direct show output... Furthermore, in the brief time it plays if I seek through a track the sound distorts heavily too.

Tried various USB ports, no change... Truly awful start, I was prepared to face some issues since I read this thread beforehand, but this is ridiculous. I'm considering sticking to my Xonar STX and returning it.

If anyone has experienced similar issues and has found a fix, please let me know!

If you already have an essence then there is no reason under the sun you should be wasting your time with that POS teac

I was in two minds whether or not to purchase, but they're available at a good price here in the UK on clearance. Now I know why, this thing should never have been released primarily as a "USB" DAC with issues this bad.

Specs-wise it looked like a reasonable step up from the STX to be fair... Dual burr brown chips, balanced outputs and linear PSU (with the added benefit of keep it away from the computer's noisy internal environment).

I am a seasoned/experienced computer user of many years, and have followed the instructions to a T. Device is detected, registers and installs correctly, but after no more than 30 seconds of audio (using multiple players and output standards) the DAC appears to crash and my computer no longer see it as a piece of hardware connected. Amazingly, reconnecting the USB cable does not remedy this(!) you have to turn the DAC off and back on again.

IME, USB DACs are very simple and easy devices to setup and run (hell, I've had cheap as chips Chinese DACs with less problems than this) - something this shoddy should not have passed the Q/A stage, especially at this price point. Since it's nigh-on discontinued, the chances of TEAC helping out the userbase with a new driver are probably slim.

First and last TEAC product I buy, unless some one has a miracle cure for this.

First and last TEAC product I buy, unless some one has a miracle cure for this.

This is mostly due to Tenor's TE8802 chip. Driver support is a disgrace. Fortunately I already had a Hiface Two to use with my Audio-GD NFB-17.2. Bad drivers is the reason that Kingwa from Audio-GD is changing the USB chip in all of his products.

I figured as much - ironically, support seems pretty good on open platforms such as Linux!

It's a real shame as the DAC itself looks tidy build and spec wise, but problems like this make it a no-go for desktop use unless you are happy to keep your internal card and piggy back off an optical/coax connection (kind defeating the point really).